The Myth of Fragmentation - The Composition and Publication History of Samuel T. Coleridge's Kubla Khan

Although the exact date remains unknown, it is believed that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his poem Kubla Khan sometime in the fall of 1797 and began revisions of it in the early spring of 1798. Interestingly, although no original manuscript has been found, the Crewe Manuscript of Kubla Khan was discovered in 1934. Currently, the Crewe Manuscript is the earliest know version of Kubla Khan and is believed to have been written around 1810. After Lord Byron’s zealous response to Kubla Khan, Coleridge published the poem for the first time in May of 1816 under Byron’s publisher John Murray. While the poem was initially bound with two of his other poems: Christabel and Pains of Sleep, Kubla Khan was then published in 1828 within Coleridge’s collection Poetical Works. The final publication of Kubla Khan during Coleridge’s lifetime came in 1834, when a cumulative version of Poetical Works was introduced, which included some of Coleridge’s early, unpublished works.

When Kubla Khan was first published in 1816, contemporary reviewers noted the poem’s fragmentary nature and spoke of its nonsensical style, imagery, and content. The poem was, in a sense, viewed as not a “wholly meaningful poem, but only meaningless music.” More recent studies by scholar E. S. Shaffer asserted that Coleridge intended for Kubla Khan to be a part of his project to create “a new kind of epic poem” that was to be called The Fall of Jerusalem. Shaffer believes that Coleridge was unable to complete this epic project, and consequently, left Kubla Khan as “an epic fragment” that has bred a myth of fragmentation that has followed the poem since its initial publication.

Much as the poem itself is stylistically fragmented in both its imagery, syntax, and overall structure, its composition and publication history shares this fragmented appearance. Coleridge firmly believed that Kubla Khan was an incomplete poem, and therefore, spent his entire life continually revising and republishing it.

During the time that Coleridge composed Kubla Khan, biographer Richard Holmes documents that Coleridge “must have been producing something like fifty lines of blank verse a day, and a tremendous sense of liberation cam over him.” In the late 1790s, Coleridge resided in the Quantock Hills of Somerset near his close friend and fellow poet William Wordsworth. Holmes argues that,

it was some time during this first fortnight in October 1797 that he probably went for a long solitary walk along the coast to Lynton, exhausted from his labours, and, taken ill on his return journey, stopped off at Ash Farm above Culborne Church, where he wrote Kubla Khan.

After writing his first draft of Kubla Khan, Coleridge was unable to finish the poem to his liking, and consequently, dismissed it as an incomplete fragment. On October 14th, 1797, Coleridge wrote a letter to his friend John Thelwall, stating,

my mind feels as if it ached to behold & know something great – something one & indivisible – and it is only in the faith of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of sublimity or majesty!

For the remainder of his life, Coleridge believed that he was unable to aptly reproduce this “sense of sublimity or majesty.” Interestingly, Holmes notes that with regard to his early poems, it “is much less well-known that Coleridge went on revising, improving, and re-presenting them in later life,” and this pattern continued to Kubla Khan. Similarly, Bahti argues that “rarely has one seen so many unaccomplished projects and unfinished texts: his writings lie there like a field of ruins and fragments.” Although no original draft has been discovered from the fall of 1797, Jack Stillinger declares,

it is not difficult to imagine an initial stage of the work consisting of the first thirty-six lines – the description of Kubla Khan the triumphant creator, or arrogant tyrant, decreeing his stately pleasure dome in a place sacred to the river Alph, thereby producing a miracle of rare device – and then a later stage in which Coleridge added eighteen lines expressing a fervent desire to re-create “that dome in air.”

On April 10th, 1816, Coleridge had recited Kubla Khan to Lord Bryon who extensively praised the poem, as well as Christabel, and urged Coleridge to publish both immediately. It is believed that Coleridge continued to revise the poem until its publication in May of 1816 by John Murray, upon the zealous encouragement of Lord Byron. Kubla Khan was published in book form along with Christabel and Pains of Sleep, which “despite savage reviews, ran to three editions in that year.”

This 1816 version of the poem was titled Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream and was introduced by a lengthy Preface (“Of the Fragment of Kubla Khan”), in which, Coleridge attempts to describe the conditions under which he composed Kubla Khan, as well as the poem’s apparent fragmented nature (see both the 1816 version and Preface in attachment). Interestingly, Coleridge inserted an introductory paragraph in the 1816 Preface to the poem that he later replaced in 1834 with the words “A Fragment.” This lost introductory paragraph read as such:

The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity Lord Byron, and as far as the Author’s own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

The 1816 edition of Kubla Khan is divided into four stanzas – lines 1-11, 12-30, 31-36, and 37-54 – and its 11th line contained the words “And folding,” which have been since changed to “Enfolding.” Textual scholar Jack Stillinger attributes this discrepancy to “a copying or printing error” in the 1816 version.

Allan Grant declares that this 1816 Preface “has grown into the poem until, in any critical account, the two are inseparable.” Also with regard to the Preface, Timothy Bahti argues that when Coleridge writes,

that some fragments were left behind for him, while the others passed away like disturbed mirror-images on water ‘without the after restoration of the latter,’ he indicates that the parts – including those of this recollection or understanding – remain forever fragmentary…

Richard Holmes powerfully states that “the Preface to Kubla Khan eventually became one of the most celebrated, and disputed, accounts of poetic composition ever written.” The 1816 Preface was four pages long. However, it has been argued by some critics that the Preface only served,

as a shield against criticism, and ‘one school of thought maintains that it is untrustworthy and should be dismissed as a fabrication intended only to apologize for the publication of a fragment.

Interestingly, Stillinger states that an alterative, marked copy of the 1816 version is currently in the Harvard archives. He declares that this copy is identical to the 1816 published version of Kubla Khan and only differs in that “‘And folding’ in line 11 is here changed back by hand, probably by Coleridge or James Gillman, to ‘Enfolding.’”

After running for multiple editions with Christabel and Pains of Sleep, Coleridge then published Kubla Khan with other poems in the 1828 collection Poetical Works. R. L. Brett describes that this volume,

was handsomely printed by William Pickering with the new Aldine device of a dolphin enfolding an anchor. This edition, hastily prepared in trying circumstances, was printed in only 500 copies. Another edition, only slightly revised, followed in 1829.

Jack Stillinger notes that the 1828 printed version of Kubla Khan was nearly identical to its 1816 printing, but humorously contained the printing error in line 18 – “think” for “thick” (“fast think pants”!) The Preface was ended with the words: “Note to the first Edition of 1816.” Stillinger continues that in the 1829 version, “think” is corrected to “thick,” but “the text is otherwise substantively identical with that in 1828 and should not be considered a separate version.”

Brett also states that Coleridge’s Poetical Works gradually expanded and became more cumulative throughout the early 1830s. The last edition of Poetical Works was published in 1834, as Coleridge was dying, and therefore, his nephew-son-in-law Henry Nelson Coleridge did much of the editorial work. Interestingly, Brett writes,

the 1834 edition included a number of juvenilia and occasional verses that Coleridge had earlier rejected, it also included a number of interesting ‘late’ poems beyond those collected in 1828.

The 1834 version of Kubla Khan was only altered through, “stanza divisions as in 1828 – after 11 and 30 – and then 37-54, which made a fourth stanza in 1816, set off separately from the rest by (the accident of?) a page-break.” This dramatic introduction of “juvenilia and occasional verses that Coleridge had earlier rejected” seems to further illustrate Coleridge’s lack of confidence in his poetic work. His consistent belief that Kubla Khan was an incomplete and unpublishable fragment appears to transcend that specific poem, as that opinion appears to apply to numerous other fragmentary poems. Coleridge, in general, appeared to lack much confidence in his poems, as he clearly believed that he was continually unable to aptly recreate the “sublimity or majesty” that he initially envisioned.

Brett’s work illustrates another interesting point: Coleridge’s descendents acted as editors of his major writings and poetry for many years during and after Coleridge’s death in 1834. Brett states,

members of Coleridge’s family became the first careful editors of his work: his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge and his wife Sara, who was Coleridge’s only daughter; then his youngest son Derwent, two years younger than Sara and after Derwent had died, Coleridge’s grandson Ernest Hartley whose edition of the Complete Poetical Works (1912) brings the family editing to a close.

After Coleridge’s death, Kubla Khan did not undergo any significant editorial changes. However, in 1934, the Crewe Manuscript of Kubla Khan was discovered, which is a single sheet of paper that has the poem written in Coleridge’s handwriting on both sides. The Crewe is an autograph manuscript that is now in the British Museum and provides a dramatically different description of the conditions of the poem’s origins. Agneta Lindgren argues that the Crewe Manuscript,

provides a much shorter account of the birth of the poem. There is no reference to the person from Porlock in it. The poem itself differs slightly from the version given in the 1816 edition. This manuscript has led scholars to ask questions such as: How much of the account given in the 1816 Preface should we believe, and what relation does it bear to the poem?

Lindgren’s analysis implies the myth of fragmentation that hovers over Coleridge’s literary career, as both the Preface to the 1816 version of Kubla Khan and the note to the Crewe Manuscript appear to convey different, if not contradictory, fragments about the poem’s composition history (see both the Crewe and its Note in attachment). Interestingly, while the 1816 version provided an introductory explanatory Preface, the Crewe Manuscript provided an explanatory note at the end of the poem. Scholar T. C. Skeat traced the history of the Crewe Manuscript in British Museum Quarterly, documenting,

The only possible clue to its origin is a faint penciled note at the end of the manuscript: “Sent by Mrs. Southey, as an Autograph of Coleridge.” From this we may conjecture that the manuscript was originally sent by Coleridge to Southey, passed into Mrs. Southey’s possession after the latter’s death in 1843, and was subsequently given by her to some private autograph collector. It subsequently appeared in the sale-room of Messrs Puttick & Simpson on April 28th, 1859, when, as lot 109, it was knocked down to Monckton Milnes, owner of a noted collection of autographs, for the modest sum of 1 pound 15 shillings. From him it descended to his son, afterwards Marquess of Crewe, so the history of the manuscript from 1859 onwards is established.

While the Crewe Manuscript’s introductory note offers a different account of Kubla Khan’s composition history than the 1816 Preface, the Manuscript’s version of the poem also has minor alterations of words and abbreviated words. For example, 1816’s “Xanadu” was “Xannadu” in the Crewe, “Kubla Khan” was “Cubla Khan,” and “Through” (line 4) was “Thro’.” Also, the Crewe Manuscript contains two stanzas, while the 1816 version contains four. Interestingly, the final versions contain either three or four. Jack Stillinger argues that the Crewe Manuscript “differs in wording from the first printed text in about one-fifth of the lines, but its variants, like those that occur in later printings, are of relatively minor importance.”

Interestingly, Richard Holmes notes that in Coleridge’s lectures dating from 1807, he alluded to 250 missing lines of Kubla Khan that were never published, and perhaps, never written. Holmes equates this mysterious statement to the effects of opium on Coleridge’s sense of reality or unreality. There are only five known different versions of Kubla Khan: the Crewe Manuscript, the first printed version of the poem in 1816, the slightly different 1816 version that is at Harvard, the 1828 published version, and the 1834 published version. Jack Stillinger argues,

most twentieth-century interpreters of Kubla Khan have based their readings on the text in E. H. Coleridge’s Oxford edition of 1912, or on reprints deriving from that edition, and thus have worked with a three-stanza structure made up of 1-11, 12-36, and 37-54.

Clearly, Coleridge himself could not decide upon a single version of Kubla Khan. For his entire life, as well as his post-humus life, Coleridge and his family constantly revised the poem and republished it. Interestingly, the different versions of Kubla Khan do not significantly differ in content or style. The main differences are only in stanza arrangement and the spelling of certain words. Although Coleridge believed that the poem was an incomplete “epic fragment,” he never significantly altered its published form by adding new material to the preexisting structure.

Moreover, the myth of fragmentation that has been alluded to appears to exist more accurately as a sort of mystery of fragmentation. One is led to wonder if Coleridge had any ideas of how to complete this fragment, or conversely, if he merely failed to publish any of the poem’s significant revisions. Ironically, Holmes notes that Coleridge, in his writing of Biographia Literaria between April and September 1815, makes no reference to “his composition of ~Kubla Khan.” Coleridge appeared to have a fragmented opinion of his poem and its incompleteness, its composition and publication history, and even its subsequent revisions. The actual composition, revision, and publication history remains a myth or mystery of fragmentation, even to this day, as Coleridge’s true opinion of Kubla Khan~~ remains unknown.

Bibliography:

Bahti, Timothy. “Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and the Fragment of Romanticism.” MLN (Modern Language Notes) 96:5 (December 1981), 1035-1050. Available at: Jstor.

Brett, R. L. (editor). S. T. Coleridge, Writers and their Background. United States of America: Ohio University Press, 1972.

Collings, David. “Coleridge Beginning a Career: Desultory Authorship in Religious Musings.” ELH 58:1 (Spring 1991), 167-193. Available at: Jstor.

Crewe Manuscript and Analysis. Online. Available at: http://members.shaw.ca/jadestorm/manuscript.html

Grant, Allan. A Preface to Coleridge. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.

Google Image Search. Online. Available at: http://images.google.com.

Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Early Visions (1772-1804). New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.

Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Darker Reflections (1804-1834). New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

Lindgren, Agneta. The Fallen World in Coleridge’s Poetry. Sweden: Lund University Press, 1999.

Newlyn, Lucy (editor). The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Archive. Online. Available at: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stcColeridge/stc.html

Stillinger, Jack. ~~Coleridge & Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems~~. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Supplement to the S. T. Coleridge Archive. Online. Available at: http://www.mindspring.com/~mtiefert/poetry/coleridge.html